My girlfriend wants to watch through all of Classic Who (and yes I did make sure they knew how ambitious that was,) so when I stayed with her last month we watched the first three stories! Not even the extremely '60s gender politics has put her off, that's dedication. Next time we watch we'll be up to some missing episodes, so we'll see how we go with those.

I enjoyed revisiting the first few episodes that set up so many things for the rest of the show. The first human companions, the Tardis becoming a police box for the first time, the Doctor learning not to be a massive bitch. I always love that the Doctor gets his name from Ian... but I'm always amused that Ian seemingly makes it up by accident. The first utterance of the word in the show is Ian saying to Barbara "He's a doctor, isn't he?" and I really want to know where he got that from. Did that come from one of the Time Lords or is this the most momentous case of misremembering in science fiction?

I still think the first two episodes in particular of The Daleks are really fantastic. On my way home I listened to what I think are the only two pieces of Dr Who EU that act as a sequel to The Daleks more than any other Dalek story: the David Bradley audio Return to Skaro, and (weirdly maybe) The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield Volume 1. Well, maybe you could say that the Benny set (specifically The Lights of Skaro) is about all Dalek stories as much as the first one, but I like it a whole lot more than Return to Skaro and was looking for an excuse to relisten anyway.

It felt appropriate watching The Edge of Destruction soon after 73 Yards came out, as a reminder that Doctor Who has always got to have weird bizarre little episodes as part of its ecosystem. As always, Edge of Destruction made me think about how its a great concept that really feels let down by some of the the acting, directing, and writing. It kind of made me think... would it be cool if it was remade today? Not as a proper Doctor Who episode, just take the script (or most of it) and start from scratch. Commit to the weird and sinister '60s sci-fi aesthetic, make a new Tardis set, make sure the cast and crew are on the same page about the tone and vibes. It's just an idea that I'm convinced could be really cool, though it'll never exist outside my head.

On the topic of Mochijun, Im sorry to say, but the pace of Vanitas no Carte is just so killed for me right now, I cant really feel anything about it for more than a moment, catch me when chapters are normal length or something spectacular happens and its impact can be properly conveyed through 16 pages- 😔✌️

i made an oc thats at least nicknamed "Stupid" and im constantly thinking about what a power move that is tbh

having a comic idea in my brain but i dont wanna get up and sketch it but i cant write it in the way i want to because i am cursed to think in pictures but i cant. draw it rn.

Linebeck is the Maui to Link's Moana. Or more accurately the Peter B Parker to Link's Miles Morales. He could have the most interesting and heroic past, but he has the vibes of Just Some Guy. I'd kill for a game set after Phantom Hourglass (but before Spirit Tracks) where we learn more about Linebeck's history, and how it plays into his newfound parental relationship with Link

Linebeck being more or less Just Some Guy compared to Link being this weirdly competent pre-teen is a fun part of their dynamic a lot of the time. There is a lot of time between PH and ST and that obviously is an opportunity for more storytelling between those characters, plus considering that we have very limited information on Linebeck's history or... anything, exploring him further is always a lot of fun, and could make for an interesting subject for anything before or after PH (or during), and further going into his relationship and dynamic with Link has a lot of potential for... a lot of different stuff!

the funtimes feel to be inspired by rolfe dewolfe. you know of a rock-afire explosion fame. with foxy having the personality and freddy having the puppet and uhhh yeah. thats my fnaf observation of the day

nina has to leave arkangel like its inarguable but also i dont want to have to build her a new, non-angel-themed persona i worked so hard on prophet. AND the new design will rely on a completely different general shape because it'll have to be designed with a lot more consideration for how she looks in it seated, which is something specifically that im very bad at. AUGH.

The Three Commandments

The thing about writing is this: you gotta start in medias res, to hook your readers with action immediately. But readers aren’t invested in people they know nothing about, so start with a framing scene that instead describes the characters and the stakes. But those scenes are boring, so cut straight to the action, after opening with a clever quip, but open in the style of the story, and try not to be too clever in the opener, it looks tacky. One shouldn’t use too many dialogue tags, it’s distracting; but you can use ‘said’ a lot, because ‘said’ is invisible, but don’t use ‘said’ too much because it’s boring and uninformative – make sure to vary your dialogue tags to be as descriptive as possible, except don’t do that because it’s distracting, and instead rely mostly on ‘said’ and only use others when you need them. But don’t use ‘said’ too often; you should avoid dialogue tags as much as you possibly can and indicate speakers through describing their reactions. But don’t do that, it’s distracting.

Having a viewpoint character describe themselves is amateurish, so avoid that. But also be sure to describe your viewpoint character so that the reader can picture them. And include a lot of introspection, so we can see their mindset, but don’t include too much introspection, because it’s boring and takes away from the action and really bogs down the story, but also remember to include plenty of introspection so your character doesn’t feel like a robot. And adverbs are great action descriptors; you should have a lot of them, but don’t use a lot of adverbs; they’re amateurish and bog down the story. And

The reason new writers are bombarded with so much outright contradictory writing advice is that these tips are conditional. It depends on your style, your genre, your audience, your level of skill, and what problems in your writing you’re trying to fix. Which is why, when I’m writing, I tend to focus on what I call my Three Commandments of Writing. These are the overall rules; before accepting any writing advice, I check whether it reinforces one of these rules or not. If not, I ditch it.

1: Thou Shalt Have Something To Say

What’s your book about?

I don’t mean, describe to me the plot. I mean, why should anybody read this? What’s its thesis? What’s its reason for existence, from the reader’s perspective? People write stories for all kinds of reasons, but things like ‘I just wanted to get it out of my head’ are meaningless from a reader perspective. The greatest piece of writing advice I ever received was you putting words on a page does not obligate anybody to read them. So why are the words there? What point are you trying to make?

The purpose of your story can vary wildly. Usually, you’ll be exploring some kind of thesis, especially if you write genre fiction. Curse Words, for example, is an exploration of self-perpetuating power structures and how aiming for short-term stability and safety can cause long-term problems, as well as the responsibilities of an agitator when seeking to do the necessary work of dismantling those power structures. Most of the things in Curse Words eventually fold back into exploring this question. Alternately, you might just have a really cool idea for a society or alien species or something and want to show it off (note: it can be VERY VERY HARD to carry a story on a ‘cool original concept’ by itself. You think your sky society where they fly above the clouds and have no rainfall and have to harvest water from the clouds below is a cool enough idea to carry a story: You’re almost certainly wrong. These cool concept stories work best when they are either very short, or working in conjunction with exploring a theme). You might be writing a mystery series where each story is a standalone mystery and the point is to present a puzzle and solve a fun mystery each book. Maybe you’re just here to make the reader laugh, and will throw in anything you can find that’ll act as framing for better jokes. In some genres, readers know exactly what they want and have gotten it a hundred times before and want that story again but with different character names – maybe you’re writing one of those. (These stories are popular in romance, pulp fantasy, some action genres, and rather a lot of types of fanfiction).

Whatever the main point of your story is, you should know it by the time you finish the first draft, because you simply cannot write the second draft if you don’t know what the point of the story is. (If you write web serials and are publishing the first draft, you’ll need to figure it out a lot faster.)

Once you know what the point of your story is, you can assess all writing decisions through this lens – does this help or hurt the point of my story?

2: Thou Shalt Respect Thy Reader’s Investment

Readers invest a lot in a story. Sometimes it’s money, if they bought your book, but even if your story is free, they invest time, attention, and emotional investment. The vast majority of your job is making that investment worth it. There are two factors to this – lowering the investment, and increasing the payoff. If you can lower your audience’s suspension of disbelief through consistent characterisation, realistic (for your genre – this may deviate from real realism) worldbuilding, and appropriately foreshadowing and forewarning any unexpected rules of your world. You can lower the amount of effort or attention your audience need to put into getting into your story by writing in a clear manner, using an entertaining tone, and relying on cultural touchpoints they understand already instead of pushing them in the deep end into a completely unfamiliar situation. The lower their initial investment, the easier it is to make the payoff worth it.

Two important notes here: one, not all audiences view investment in the same way. Your average reader views time as a major investment, but readers of long fiction (epic fantasies, web serials, et cetera) often view length as part of the payoff. Brandon Sanderson fans don’t grab his latest book and think “Uuuugh, why does it have to be so looong!” Similarly, some people like being thrown in the deep end and having to put a lot of work into figuring out what the fuck is going on with no onboarding. This is one of science fiction’s main tactics for forcibly immersing you in a future world. So the valuation of what counts as too much investment varies drastically between readers.

Two, it’s not always the best idea to minimise the necessary investment at all costs. Generally, engagement with art asks something of us, and that’s part of the appeal. Minimum-effort books do have their appeal and their place, in the same way that idle games or repetitive sitcoms have their appeal and their place, but the memorable stories, the ones that have staying power and provide real value, are the ones that ask something of the reader. If they’re not investing anything, they have no incentive to engage, and you’re just filling in time. This commandment does not exist to tell you to try to ask nothing of your audience – you should be asking something of your audience. It exists to tell you to respect that investment. Know what you’re asking of your audience, and make sure that the ask is less than the payoff.

The other way to respect the investment is of course to focus on a great payoff. Make those characters socially fascinating, make that sacrifice emotionally rending, make the answer to that mystery intellectually fulfilling. If you can make the investment worth it, they’ll enjoy your story. And if you consistently make their investment worth it, you build trust, and they’ll be willing to invest more next time, which means you can ask more of them and give them an even better payoff. Audience trust is a very precious currency and this is how you build it – be worth their time.

But how do you know what your audience does and doesn’t consider an onerous investment? And how do you know what kinds of payoff they’ll find rewarding? Easy – they self-sort. Part of your job is telling your audience what to expect from you as soon as you can, so that if it’s not for them, they’ll leave, and if it is, they’ll invest and appreciate the return. (“Oh but I want as many people reading my story as possible!” No, you don’t. If you want that, you can write paint-by-numbers common denominator mass appeal fic. What you want is the audience who will enjoy your story; everyone else is a waste of time, and is in fact, detrimental to your success, because if they don’t like your story then they’re likely to be bad marketing. You want these people to bounce off and leave before you disappoint them. Don’t try to trick them into staying around.) Your audience should know, very early on, what kind of an experience they’re in for, what the tone will be, the genre and character(s) they’re going to follow, that sort of thing. The first couple of chapters of Time to Orbit: Unknown, for example, are a micro-example of the sorts of mysteries that Aspen will be dealing with for most of the book, as well as a sample of their character voice, the way they approach problems, and enough of their background, world and behaviour for the reader to decide if this sort of story is for them. We also start the story with some mildly graphic medical stuff, enough physics for the reader to determine the ‘hardness’ of the scifi, and about the level of physical risk that Aspen will be putting themselves at for most of the book. This is all important information for a reader to have.

If you are mindful of the investment your readers are making, mindful of the value of the payoff, and honest with them about both from the start so that they can decide whether the story is for them, you can respect their investment and make sure they have a good time.

3: Thou Shalt Not Make Thy World Less Interesting

This one’s really about payoff, but it’s important enough to be its own commandment. It relates primarily to twists, reveals, worldbuilding, and killing off storylines or characters. One mistake that I see new writers make all the time is that they tank the engagement of their story by introducing a cool fun twist that seems so awesome in the moment and then… is a major letdown, because the implications make the world less interesting.

“It was all a dream” twists often fall into this trap. Contrary to popular opinion, I think these twists can be done extremely well. I’ve seen them done extremely well. The vast majority of the time, they’re very bad. They’re bad because they take an interesting world and make it boring. The same is true of poorly thought out, shocking character deaths – when you kill a character, you kill their potential, and if they’re a character worth killing in a high impact way then this is always a huge sacrifice on your part. Is it worth it? Will it make the story more interesting? Similarly, if your bad guy is going to get up and gloat ‘Aha, your quest was all planned by me, I was working in the shadows to get you to acquire the Mystery Object since I could not! You have fallen into my trap! Now give me the Mystery Object!’, is this a more interesting story than if the protagonist’s journey had actually been their own unmanipulated adventure? It makes your bad guy look clever and can be a cool twist, but does it mean that all those times your protagonist escaped the bad guy’s men by the skin of his teeth, he was being allowed to escape? Are they retroactively less interesting now?

Whether these twists work or not will depend on how you’ve constructed the rest of your story. Do they make your world more or less interesting?

If you have the audience’s trust, it’s permissible to make your world temporarily less interesting. You can kill off the cool guy with the awesome plan, or make it so that the Chosen One wasn’t actually the Chosen One, or even have the main character wake up and find out it was all a dream, and let the reader marinate in disappointment for a little while before you pick it up again and turn things around so that actually, that twist does lead to a more interesting story! But you have to pick it up again. Don’t leave them with the version that’s less interesting than the story you tanked for the twist. The general slop of interest must trend upward, and your sacrifices need to all lead into the more interesting world. Otherwise, your readers will be disappointed, and their experience will be tainted.

Whenever I’m looking at a new piece of writing advice, I view it through these three rules. Is this plot still delivering on the book’s purpose, or have I gone off the rails somewhere and just stared writing random stuff? Does making this character ‘more relateable’ help or hinder that goal? Does this argument with the protagonists’ mother tell the reader anything or lead to any useful payoff; is it respectful of their time? Will starting in medias res give the audience an accurate view of the story and help them decide whether to invest? Does this big twist that challenges all the assumptions we’ve made so far imply a world that is more or less interesting than the world previously implied?

Hopefully these can help you, too.

That cool bee book I was talking about a while ago mostly refrains from philosophical digressions (which I think is a strength, I appreciated how the author had total confidence that just clearly presenting the facts about his subject would be enough to make a fascinating book without the need for any "...and here's why that should blow your mind" editorializing, and he's totally right), but there was one towards the end I've found myself thinking about a lot, which is: he wants people to stop using "self-consciousness" (i.e. the concept exemplified by the mirror test but used implicitly or explicitly in tons of other contexts) as a criterion for which animals can be considered sentient/morally relevant/having significant inner lives/however you want to describe it. Not, as you might expect, because he thinks it's an unreasonably high bar to meet, but because it's such a low bar that it produces no distinctions: he argues that basically any animal with any kind of developed central nervous system has to have some kind of self-consciousness almost by definition.

The example I remember best is: imagine you can see an object in your visual field getting closer to you. No matter the specifics, it's obviously always going to make a huge difference to how you evaluate this situation whether the cause of the object getting closer is a] the object is moving towards you, or b] you are moving towards the object. If a, then something might be pursuing you or falling on you or a thousand other things that are just not even worth considering in the case of b. But visually the two cases are indistinguishable; if you're going to be able to track the difference, your brain has to be putting at least some work into keeping tabs on what your own intentions are and what choices you're making as you move through the world, predicting the expected consequences of those choices, and maintaining a fairly tidy mental separation between stuff in the world that you're making happen and stuff in the world that's just happening of its own volition. Otherwise, every time you walk towards a rock you'll freak out and think the rock is rolling into you, or vice versa.

And it's not hard to see how this applies to your entire sensory world right, it applies to sounds and tactile sensations and even feelings internal to your body to some extent, if you're going to both perceive the world and take actions in the world then it's mandatory to mentally separate yourself and the world before that's going to yield even an ounce of helpful information, you just can't function successfully on the most basic level if you're processing stuff that you're doing on the same level as stuff that's happening, if you're in that state then you simply don't have a usable model of the world at all, you just have chaos.

So you can very easily eliminate a certain seductive narrative about the evolution of consciousness, which starts with very primitive animals who are mentally processing nothing but basic sensory inputs, then as you rise up the chain more complex animals are forming concepts of objects and building up a more nuanced understanding of the world, until finally you approach humans and the mind becomes so subtle and sophisticated that it gains access to this special advanced meta-level of thought where it can even understand itself! No, the self is precisely the one idea that has to be in place from the very beginning, before any of it has even the most rudimentary practical value. Self-consciousness isn't the pinnacle of the mind's evolution, it's one of the lowest, most basic foundations that everything else builds off of.

I think this is really cool stuff! I don't know enough about the relevant academic philosophy of mind debates to say how far all this does or doesn't speak to that, maybe someone will tell me the "self-consciousness" concept being attacked here is a strawman somehow, I don't know. But it's definitely impacted the way I (just a dumb guy who likes creatures) think about our small small cousins and what their lives might be like and I think it's super interesting. If you think it's interesting too then maybe you wanna buy The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka and read it. It's mostly not about this stuff, as I say it's light on philosophy and heavy on bee-life immersion, but if you actually read this whole post then you're probably in the market for that I feel like.

I’m kind of surprised I haven’t seen any fanfics that run on the idea that Alfred is a ghost? (Either as like the main focus of the story, or just a subplot.)

Think about it.

A lot of stories kind of have Alfred as being this eternally elderly man regardless of how old everyone else in the story is. The man doesn’t seem to age!

More importantly, where does he get the time and energy to do all the stuff he does to keep the manor and the family functional? He somehow manages to keep the giant house that is the Wayne Manor in order despite how many people live there plus his added duties thanks to the family’s vigilante lifestyle? When exactly does this man sleep? Also, I always find it amusing how in stories Alfred seems to always be cooking but it’s rare to actually show him eating himself.

What if someone plays with the idea of him not needing to sleep, eat, etc. because he is a ghost?

I just kind of imagine the idea of Alfred getting up one morning to start the day and nothing seems amiss either to himself or the rest of the family; however, when he retires to his quarters for the night he discovers his body laying still and cold where he had left it. (Could you imagine him, after coming to accept he is a ghost, just… getting rid of his own body and going about life as usual and never telling anyone in the family?)

Maybe I just find the idea of Alfred, rather than passing on, just continuing to take care of his family like nothing has changed touching, if in a morbid way.

The idea could, technically, be construed as the rest of the family not paying Alfred any mind or taking him for granted so much they don’t notice he died, but in my head its more of a fluffy/humorous thing where Alfred is just very good at hiding his ghostly nature from anyone.

This story idea doesn’t even have to necessarily be a Danny Phantom crossover. It’s just that this fanfic idea was spawned out of this brief scene idea of Danny coming to live at the manor (insert any other story plot as to why), and both Alfred and Danny clocking each other immediately. (The idea included Danny fretting over asking Alfred about it but being afraid Alfred might not know he’s dead, and Alfred noting Danny is half-ghost but his only concern is that anyone living under his roof is cared for.

(If I didn't already have a dozen or more story ideas sitting in folders not yet completed, I'd kind of want to brainstorm on this more because I think its a cool concept?)

For me the most disappointing thing about Palworld is the designs being so boring and bland that you'll never have cause to review them. We deserve better from a creature collecting game, especially one making this much money!

Yeah here's the most opinion I can possibly muster on any of them:

DUMUD: it's a big fat shark-like mudskipper and that's a good concept, it just doesn't really have the charm of any Pokemon it shares anything in common with.

WUMPO: resembles the fur-wearing "werewolf" pokemon that got cut from the first or second generation, crossed with Tangrowth. One of the more okay designs because those are two good pokemon.

SIBELYX: this is supposed to be their Gardevoir I guess and I think it's an owl? Or is it a moth? Well it ends up one of the slightly cooler looking ones a little less obviously derivative of specific pokemon. Maybe they were also going for a Dimitrescue knockoff with the hat

CAWGNITO: an alright one because plague doctors just generally look cool. However the simple formula of plague doctor + actual bird would have been far too obvious and underwhelming as a Pokemon. There's no novelty or twist to this.

HANGYU: this is the one that's a ghostly noose canonically used to execute people. It's a funny little send-up of the darker pokemon pokedex entries, though the design is uninspired compared to object-based creatures in Pokemon, Digimon or any other monster franchise I can think of.

LOVANDER: this is one that fucks people, and they possibly borrowed the topography of Salazzle's official model. I want to think they did intend it to be freaky and unwholesome looking with the rubbery goblin hands, but I suspect they intended something actually sexy by furry monsterfucker standards and just weren't good at it. Yes I know that likely does not stop people from being into it anyway.

TEAFANT: I was going to say this is the only pal that looks better than its closest equivalent Pokemon, because they would be Cufant, and I gave Cufant a pretty negative review back in the day.

......But actually, now I kind of like Cufant. A lot, come to think of it! Teafant is cute and competent in the most paint-by-numbers possible way. It's what almost anyone would draw in ten seconds if asked to make a cute marketable teacup elephant pokemon. Cufant is an awkward, messy design but it is comparatively cute in a goofy, dorky way that's rare among the Pals, and more importantly, it is unique. I don't think they used AI to generate any Palworld models (the tech isn't there yet) but I can see why people assume they used AI just to get the initial ideas, because it's very easy to find people who have more a more creative eye for character design. I'd say even if not ESPECIALLY people with zero experience in art would have made the Pals look more interesting.

Name: Legsit

Debut: Yo-Kai Watch 3

Look at this! Look at this!!! This is the little guy from emergency exit signs and stop signs and various more of our favorite signs, but this time you can BEFRIEND them! You can run all around town with this absolute icon of an icon! You can take Legsit for a walk across the crosswalk... and you can even teach it to jaywalk! A new thrill it would never dare to experience without your help!

Legsit is an incredible kind of design, the one that's so simple, barely a change from its inspiration, but the inspiration is what's so creative. Legsit is basically JUST the little guy from the sign, with only a little wispy head to differentiate it, but how many times have you seen it used as an actual character, with its origin tied to its gimmick? I have actually long ago had the idea of a Walk Sign Guy as a character (in the context of a boss that swings the sign itself as a weapon, and can call upon the red Stop hand to freeze its opponent) and it is so awesome to see this concept come to fruition in something big, and with its own flair!

By default, Legsit is in its iconic Static Running Pose, though it is not afraid to actually move around, too. It looks good doing it thanks to being tastefully cel-shaded! What if there was an animal that was cel-shaded in real life? Just one. Not even a translucent invertebrate like you might expect, but like, one particular species of vole. Pretty cool!

In terms of gameplay it's very straightforward. Its specialty is to make itself and allies faster like they gotta get outta here. I'm done talking about gameplay already, it's really about the visual novelty there. Now I will talk about its anime appearance, because yowza!

The anime reveals that inside the exit sign is a whole other world, one populated by a whole civilization of Legsit! They each take turns posing in the sign, but when not doing that, they just Hang Out. Some of them play on 3DSes, some lounge about, some play guitar, and some barbecue various meats that are most certainly radioactive! Would you eat Legsit's Famous Toxic Kebab? I sure hope not! Because they were saving it for me.

Legsit represents the creativity and wonder that can be found everywhere in the world, and NOT just if you know where to look! I can assure you that anywhere you look, you will see at LEAST a few things that are waiting for someone to appreciate them in just the right way. Maybe you will be the first to discover the potential of something overlooked, and if you're not the first, then that's great too! It means the world is full of beautiful minds!

Thinking about the concept of cloth or soft things in general being considered luxury to cybertronians, and just imagining one using their holoform to enter a bedroom for the first time. There a big soft berth that sinks under their weight, an entire pile of warm insulating plush fabric, and even more small soft pads that they put their heads on! Could you imagine their reaction to a carpeted room? They even put soft things on the ground they walk on! It would be like looking at one of ridiculously luxurious mansions that are so loaded up with fancy things that it almost looks like a parody

This conjured up a little idea in me with ROTB Mirage, enjoy!

"Watch your shoulders on the-!"

CRUNCH

"...Door frame." So much for getting your deposit back. Mirage shot you a crooked grin, brushing some of the sheet-rock dust off of his shoulder pauldron.

"Sorry 'bout that, sweetspark. No big deal, you can patch that up no problem!"

When Noah had told you that Mirage was able to change his size you had only partially believed him. After all, according to his own stories, the Mirage that was barely larger than Noah in Peru had also had several significant pieces blasted off of his gargantuan frame. And yet, here he was. Fully repaired, mass-shifted to a mere seven-and-a-half feet tall. And sure, he still had to stoop to avoid taking out your ceiling fan. But here he was, in your meager apartment.

It was an equally unfamiliar locale for Mirage himself, having only caught peeks of your living quarters from the alleyway outside. The shag carpet was plush under his pedes, ridiculously soft to the touch. And sure, he'd owned a few of his own garments back in the Towers, in pre-war time, but it still paled in comparison to your room with its thick curtains, fluffy carpeting, and the dozen or so plush organic creatures littering your bed.

"Do you wanna listen to something? You can sit on the bed, if you want. You're probably too big for my desk chair." You were already rifling through your tapes, gesturing to the bed with your free hand and currently oblivious to Mirage's wide-optic stare. He took a careful seat on the edge and Primus, the entire mattress sunk and molded around his bulky frame. It was heavenly. He took one of your stuffed animals between his servos and squeezed, marveling at the squish.

"Man, I can't believe y'all live like this!" He laughed, draping himself backwards onto your bed with a warning creak. "It's comfy, that's for sure. But I don't think I could sleep on somethin' like this. It might swallow me up mid-recharge. And what's with all these little soft organics?"

"Says the guy who sleeps on the floor of a garage. I'd have aches in muscles I didn't even know existed." You pressed Talking Heads 'Speaking In Tongues' into the player with a familiar click, the beginning lick of Burning Down The House echoing through the tinny speaker as you flopped down next to Mirage. "And you're strangling Hello Kitty. They're cute, and soft, and that's kind of all there is to it? Kids like to play with them, too."

"Huh! Cute. Seems like your style. The whole hab seems like your style, actually. All soft and shit. " He handed you back your slightly-dented Hello Kitty, letting out a lazy ex-vent as his arm wrapped around your shoulders. "Well what should we do now?~ You got me all the way up into your berth, aren't you gonna do somethin' about it?"

You barked out a laugh, turning your head to see Mirage's playfully smarmy grin aimed down at you. "Was that your ploy? Show off your cool alien shape-shifting just so you could get in my bed?"

"That depends. Is it working?~"

"Maybe.~"

A Grand(ish) Theory of What the Heck

I love the utterly unhinged, super detailed theories about what's going on in Good Omens, especially in season 2. I hope one or more of them turn out to be true, as some kind of glorious puzzle-box-hidden-code monstrosity. And also I think that there has to be a simpler explanation for things, for the people who are at least Somewhat Normal (tm) about this show. (... I assume such people do exist somewhere...) This is what I have been pondering recently.

The thing that started me thinking about this was this post, containing some promotional materials for season 2 that feature main characters with scenes in their heads. Like this:

Seeing this created a very similar situation in my own head, but with a nice shiny lightbulb.

All the weirdness: the car, the sideburns, the clock, the behavior of the folks of Soho, the vanishing storefront signs. The absence of God. I think this is all because everything we see is in their heads.

I don't mean it's made up. At least not entirely. Memory is already a plot point. Why not explore it on a deeper level? I've read theories emphasizing the minisodes' stories being retold by Aziraphale and Crowley. I think the whole season is like that.

You know that sort of conventional-wisdom-fact-concept that you can only dream faces of people you've seen before (or variations therein), because your brain can't make new faces up? So it just fills in what it thinks is close enough? I think that idea, applied to remembering or recollecting things, could explain so many things that are wonky in this show.

Wonky Things

Crowley parking in an impossible London location? He definitely remembers it was in London, so his brain just stuck some obvious London landmarks in there.

Awkward clattering happening when Crowley throws the stacks of books he's inexplicably carrying around the bookshop? He wouldn't actually throw Aziraphale's books! But he'd like to think he's cool and nonchalant enough to do that, and if he did it would definitely make Some Kind of Noise.

Jim walking toward the bookshop from somewhere mysterious? Maggie and Nina saw him first, and he came from that direction, so he must've walked all that way. They don't know about the elevator in the Donkey.

Aziraphale remembers tartan hills and the Loch Ness monster because he was having a jolly time driving through Scotland, so obviously the scenery must've been whimsical Scottish things.

Nina put the Honolulu roast sign up, so she remembers its presence, but perhaps the occult/ethereal visitors to her shop do not.

Maggie really did text Aziraphale about the rent, but a note through the mail slot is a much more dignified way for a scholarly angel to imagine he received a message.

On the Fallibility of Recall

This season is loaded with unrealistic inclusions. The colors are turned up to 11. Some of the scenes are more caricature than believable interaction. Remembering things never copies or reproduces them with what one might call high fidelity.

Scenes recalled by separate memories will inherently vary. One person's hefty jigger might be another person's dash. Who knows for sure where the sun was that day? You and I might recall an event having different lighting or a different color palette, sort of like viewing something with different lens filters.

According to Neil, Crowley is an unreliable narrator of the story of his Fall. He labels the variations in clock times as a continuity error in a show where Everything Is Meant, but he doesn't say whose continuity error it is. He insists that the Bentley is the same through the whole season; maybe it was the same, but remembered differently. Maybe this is part of why there's more CGI but it's harder to spot.

So What?

Is this all there is to it? I sure hope not. I like my Good Omens with enough layers to put to shame an onion wrapped in a cake and covered in a parfait.

Is this possibly the fancy footwork that's distracting from the real magic trick? I wouldn't put it past Our Gaiman. There are a lot of things one could hide in the narrative of unreliable memory.

Is this going to stop me from rewatching and repondering and remaking theories for the next couple years? Not even at gunpoint.

Yknow i love fo4 and fo76 as games but hate them as Fallout games yknow?

Like theyre nice to play and i love some of the characters but man. They just. Are not Fallout. Its literally like if you took Fallout but made it for a general audience, theres no spice!! Theres no grime!! Why is everything so clean!!!

That's the thing; these games are built with inherently different base goals in mind. Bethesda in the modern day thrives off selling the idea of player empowerment, of being an explorer in a foreign land that you conquer through hard work. You shape the world to your liking by questing and exploring and conquering. And genuinely? I got no problem with that. I think games that gas the player up like crazy and set you loose on a world to make it your own are totally fine conceptually! Like, the fantasy of being able to shape the world the way you see fit is something I think a lot of people can get into, whether you're just looking for control in your life or you just want the experience of feeling like you can have some grand effect on the world at large.

But because of that, I think the core of what makes Fallout so interesting has to be put on the backburner. I don't play Fallout to feel powerful necessarily, and I certainly don't play it for the fuckin' gunplay. I play it because it has such a fun dedication to weird stories that feel like they have something to say, a staff of writers dedicating their time and effort to being a proto-DM at a table, trying to provide interesting and thought-provoking or at least real damn fun stories in front of you, because ultimately, the West Coast Fallout games are about people. They're about characters! And when you focus less on the idea of telling stories in a world and more on empowering the player as a fourth-wall observer, those priorities clash and in the East Coast Fallout's cases, it makes for a game with no spice or edge. Having something to say about, say, the US Military or American Expansionism and Exceptionalism or the nature of clinging to the past kind of fundamentally clashes with the player empowerment fantasy that Bethesda Fallout games want to sell you. You can't have these philosophy-based, morally-interesting factional conflicts that want the player to look inward when the very concept of your game is built around collecting loot and shooting guys instead of learning about that loot and learning about those guys you're shooting and why you're shooting at each other. Having radiant quest loot loop gameplay just doesn't mesh well with a world where choices are meant to have far-reaching impact, because if it did, it'd be impossible to program under a normal development timeframe, and it would likely make the player look inward and go "what the fuck am I doing with my time?" at the endless meaningless quests to go on.

I don't think the "Lone Wanderer Comes Across A Microcosm Of Adventure" format is bad, not at all, but you have to put a lot of work to make that feel cohesive with the larger character and faction-based narratives that 1, 2, and NV are built on, so instead those Bethesda-style games opt more for a toybox, playground approach to the post apocalypse. And when your primary goal is showing the player how cool of a sandcastle they can build, it'll never be structurally sound enough to sustain even a wave of nuance.

ps. where do you think dwarf fortress (both modes why not) fits on the "roguelike spectrum" i wouldnt call fortress mode a roguelike but it also has far more in common with traditional roguelikes than most indie roguelites adventurer mode i barely have experience with but thats pretty comfortably a roguelike to me

this is one of those questions that gets a rambling answer, reader discretion is advised

Dwarf Fortress isn't really a roguelike, but it's absolutely descended from them and imo belongs in any conversation about the genre because of which specific aspects of roguelike design it's extrapolating: the procedural generation and emergent systems

so I'm probably going over something you already know and this is more for like... third party reader benefit in general, but Dwarf Fortress is actually a sequel to Slaves to Armok: God of Blood (just going to call it Armok from here)

Armok was notable primarily for two reasons

it was intended to be a fully graphical rpg based on what we'd now generally consider roguelikes

it was intended to take place in a fully simulated world with a persistent history, ecosystems, and procedurally generation extending into every aspect of the objects inside of it

anyway that obviously didn't come to pass.

Armok was simply way more complex and experimental than any of the small projects (some of which were roguelikes) that Bay12 worked on before, and while they had been releasing smaller side projects during the development, Armok wasn't really coming together

so Tarn shifted his focus back onto a side project, Dwarf Fortress, and built it into a (originally more, but later less) reasonable adaptation of that idea into a game that could actually exist

if the concept of the original Armok sounds familiar, that's kind of what Adventure Mode ended up becoming. Armok is in a lot of ways the implementation of an ambitious unreleased roguelike into a game that spawned as a spinoff of that very same roguelike, eventually surpassing it

Dwarf Fortress is its own genre entirely, having inspired a lot of modern game design around procedural generation from what was originally an overly ambitious elaboration on the procgen and emergent systems of roguelikes

so, in a weird way, I'd say Adventure Mode is one of the few cases where a "roguelike mode" in a game is so spiritually aligned with the genre that it's inarguably part of it

to kind of wrap things back around, Soulash 2 being a roguelike that's trying to emulate Adventure Mode puts it in the interesting position of (unintentionally?) serving as one of very few direct Armok successors. preddy cool!